Some users of TalkTalk experience erratic performance. They can seemingly browse with no problems then suddenly, when visiting certain websites or performing certain activities, the web pages suddenly seem to stop loading. Activities affected are browsing secure sites such as mail accounts, banking and the like or up loading large files such as photos.
The random nature of the errors makes it very difficult to spot but if these symptoms sound familiar then you may be experiencing the effects of a misconfigured MTU size on your router.
A what? MTU, or Maximum Transmission Unit, in over simplistic terms its the largest amount of data your broadband can handle in one chunk or "packet". The TalkTalk broadband network has an MTU of 1432 bytes if a conversation between your computer and your website sends data larger than can be fitted in a single packet then they are broken down into smaller chunks dicated by the MTU. If your MTU is configured wrongly then you can fragment packets which can cause slow connections. In some cases the remote site cannot or will not handle these fragmented packets,and they are discarded and never reach their destinations which results in one end of the conversation thinking everything has stopped and the connection breaking.
In plain and simple terms, if you have an MTU configured that is too large then you will experience problems ranging from slow performance through to failed website loading.
OK, enough of the mumbo jumbo. You got your modem or router from TalkTalk so everything is OK right? It should be if you used your Connect & Go CD. This should have configured your router with the correct MTU of 1432 but problems arise when:
The ideal way to correct this is to change the settings in your router and make sure the MTU is set to the correct value. Rather than guess how I am going to get all the router models together and document how to check and set the MTU.
In the meantime there is an excellent thread on this subject over on TalkTalkHell which I hope they don't mind me linking to. This discusses changing the MTU on your computer which will solve the problem there but problems may persist on other equipment connected to your broadband.
Instructions on how to change your EchoLife HG520S MTU can be found in our Broadband Help.
Please note that this Web site and the associated forums are currently in the beta stage of pre-launch.
Feel free to use the site, however, be aware that we may remove any data or functionality between now and go live.
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